Teacher Leadership
Eisenkraft, Arthur University of Massachusetts, USA
Weiss, Eric R. University of Massachusetts, USA
Thursday, 11 May 2023, 14:30-15:30, Live Science
Teacher leadership is well-documented to promote positive educational changes for students (National Research Council [NRC], 2012). Understanding how to develop teacher leaders is a potentially powerful means to scale quality STEM education. The model we have been implementing focuses on distributed leadership at the school district-level and emphasizes (1) changes in teachers’ instructional practices; (2) the development of teacher leadership; and (3) the spread of distributed leadership across the school district during and after participation in the science education leadership program. This national sample of teachers, from ~35 school districts in seven regions of the country, helps us identify salient components of leadership within schools and districts that are transferable to other settings.
Developing teacher leaders and supporting these individuals to lead while remaining in the classroom is an important component of this work. Leading teachers need to have the requisite skills and knowledge of excellent classroom teachers and be able to work with other teachers and encourage them to make changes in their classrooms. Evaluation data from the seven sites has demonstrated the effectiveness of the program in developing teacher leaders who can support district initiatives in science education.
Of the 413 different goals analyzed, 119 can be considered to be aligned with Open Schooling. The majority of these projects (74/119) can be grouped into six different overarching themes. These themes are: science interest/science literacy (22), project or place based learning (18), extracurricular/after school/clubs (10), outdoor learning (10), community engagement (7), and teaching strategies (7). As will be seen, there is some overlap among projects.
The projects listed above are representative of the categories that encompassed the greatest number of Open Schooling related projects. Among the projects that did not fall into these categories there are other notable projects. Some of these projects include:
• Write and publish a children’s book based on educating during the pandemic in 2020.
• Write and illustrate a children’s book that focuses on science inquiry as seen by a recent Latina immigrant who is just starting to learn English.
• Instead of taking a traditional approach to climate change, students will have an experience in which they collect the opinions of others about climate change and then present these opinions to a broader audience. In order to do this, students needed to practice interpreting data, designing their own questions and survey and then analyzing and communicating survey results to the public.
As these projects demonstrate, Open Schooling can be woven into the fabric of current approaches to education. These projects enhance the educational experience for students and begin to engage the greater community. Many of these projects can contribute to creating a more scientifically literate citizenry that will be needed to address the challenges facing the world today.
